From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Faroese or Faroe Islanders (Føroyingar) are the people of the Faroe Islands in Northern Europe of Norse origins.[3] About 21,000 Faroese live in neighbouring countries, particularly in Denmark, Iceland and Norway.
The Faroese language is a West Nordic language, closely related to Icelandic, and more distantly to western Norwegian dialects.
[edit] Origins
Three Faroese girls wearing traditional costumes. The
student caps identify them as newly graduated.
The first colonists were Hiberno-Scottish hermits and monks who arrived in the 6th century, but were quickly replaced by the Vikings in the century to come.
A Viking colonization took place around 650. Little is known about this period, thus giving room for speculation. A single source mentions early settlement, the Icelandic Færeyinga Saga. It was written somewhere around 1200, and it explains events taking place about 300 years earlier. According to the saga, many objected the Norwegian king's unification politics and thus fled to other countries, including the new found places in the west.
Historians have understood since the time of the Færeyinga Saga that the Viking Grímur Kamban was the first settler in the Faroes. The Norwegians must have known about the isles before leaving Norway. If Grímur Kamban had settled some time earlier, this could explain the Norwegians knowing about them.
Recent DNA analyses have revealed that Y chromosomes, tracing male descent, are 87% Scandinavian.[4] The studies show that mitochondrial DNA, tracing female descent, is 84% Scottish / Irish.[5]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Statistics Faroe Islands, 2007
- ^ Politiken, 2006 (newspaper written in Danish)
- ^ Highly discrepant proportions of female and male Scandinavian and British Isles ancestry within the isolated population of the Faroe Islands, http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v14/n4/full/5201578a.html, Thomas D Als, Tove H Jorgensen, Anders D Børglum, Peter A Petersen, Ole Mors and August G Wang, 25 January 2006
- ^ The origin of the isolated population of the Faroe Islands investigated using Y chromosomal markers, http://www.springerlink.com/content/4yuhf5m7a22gc4qm/, Tove H. Jorgensen, Henriette N. Buttenschön, August G. Wang, Thomas D. Als, Anders D. Børglum and Henrik Ewald1, 8 April 2004.
- ^ Wang, C. August. 2006. Ílegur og Føroya Søga. In: Frøði pp.20-23
[edit] Further reading
- Arge, Símun, Guðrun Sveinbjarnardóttir, Kevin Edwards, and Paul Buckland. 2005. "Viking and Medieval Settlement in the Faroes: People, Place and Environment". Human Ecology. 33, no. 5: 597-620.
